Document the purpose of the "Instance" setting in Webtools Analytics

[pfrenssen]

I am trying to configure Webtools Analytics for the Joinup project.

According to the README of the Webtools Analytics submodule there are supposed to be two settings that need to be configured: "Site ID" and "Site path". These are clear.

However there is a third undocumented setting "Instance" which is not clear. The help text is confusing:

The server instance. e.g. testing, ec.europa.eu or europa.eu.

I would assume that this is intended to be able to report visits on different environments like production and staging, but the help text seems to suggest I should enter here some kind of domains or domain prefixes?

What is meant that a site can have instances called "ec.europa.eu" and "europa.eu"? How does this correlate to the site path?

Is it instead the intention that for Joinup I enter here the names we used for our different instances like "production", "staging", "user acceptance", "demo", or should this be "uat.joinup.ec.europa.eu"?

I'd rather not be bound to specific domains, since we tend to often move our development instances around.

[pfrenssen]

@sandervd has pointed me to https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/pages/viewpage.action?spaceKey=webtools&title=Europa+Analytics which contains the following information:

instance
Allows you to switch between these instances:

• ec.europa.eu
• europa.eu
• testing

Instance is to send the tracking information to different Europa Analytics servers:

• https://webanalytics.ec.europa.eu if "ec.europa.eu" (only for EC websites)
• https://webanalytics.europa.eu if "europa.eu" (only for Inter Institutional websites)
• https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/piwik if "testing" (only for testing)

So it appears that we should always use one of these three settings. In addition to documenting this it would seem proper to also convert this setting into a dropdown so that users cannot enter incorrect information.

[pfrenssen]

I proposed a fix in #44.

[MrGRA]

Hi @pfrenssen, we will have more instances soon and I think it would be nice to not hardcode the Piwik instances.

Is it possible to have a more dynamic way to maintain instances on the module?
I suggest the following fields for the "Europa Analytics server instance":

• Instance/Friendly name (eg. "testing")
• URL (eg. "https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/piwik/piwik.php")
• Description (optional)

Thanks

[pfrenssen]

@MrGRA having pluggable instances sounds like a great idea!